If We Shadows Have Offended
by Kates
Summary: Nemesis AU. ShinzonOC romance. Are miracles – happy endings – so impossible, even for the antagonist of a tale? Perhaps not, if Isis has anything to say about it…
1. The Captain and the Doctor

– If We Shadows Have Offended –

Summary:  Star Trek: Nemesis; AU.  Shinzon/OC.  Are miracles – happy endings – so impossible, even for the antagonist of a tale?  Perhaps not, if Isis has anything to say about it…

Premise:  Praetor Shinzon, in an alternate universe what-if fic, has met and fallen desperately in love with a beautiful, mysterious, serene and exotic humanoid who is known only as Isis: a sorceress of great power, who saw his end and went back to alter time because of this.  She rescued him from his path of eventual self-destruction and they are now rulers of the planets Romulus and Remus, keeping both the Federation – and the rest of the galaxy – on its toes, carefully wary of them, all the while indulging surreptitiously in their newfound bliss…

**Author's Note:**  I am a simple fan of Patrick Stewart and Tom Hardy, who had a sudden inspiration to write this ficlet one night after envisioning an alternate end for the Praetor.  I do not offend anyone, Star Trek fan or otherwise; I was completely content with the ending of Nemesis, but the artist's mind took over…hence, this.  Please do not flame me.  I do not own, or pretend to own, anything of Star Trek or the Shakespearean quotes utilized within this piece – I only own Isis, and the concept of this story.  Please r&r!

Enjoy… 

_Aboard the Enterprise…_

Jean-Luc Picard's eyes stared into the now-blank viewscreen: unreadable and distant in expression.  There was deep thoughtfulness in his air.

_How had this come to pass…?_

The door alarm chirped then, bringing him out of his reverie, and he answered it with a distracted command of, "Come."

At his sally, the door whizzed open, softly hissing, and Dr. Beverly Crusher entered.  Her deep, entrancing eyes focused on 

Picard – knowing and reading the vastly different emotions that were chasing each other across, like fleeting shadows at twilight, across his face.

"Just when we think we have life all figured out, our courses mapped and laid out straight before us…it turns around and surprise us, doesn't it?" she asked, softly.

Jean-Luc looked up at her, a new light in his eyes, although his brow was still clouded with thought and – she noticed – concern.

"It is just so, Beverly…" he replied, pensively. "But…perhaps…do you think that it – life – is passing us by in a different way than it was originally intended…?  I can't ge the thought out of my head…"

And he turned his gaze back upon the viewscreen.  Moments later, its flat surface had held the image of Admiral Janeway.  _"It appears, Jean-Luc," she had told him, seeming oddly perplexed herself, "That the Romulan situation has become a nonentity.  Praetor Shinzon has made peace between the planets, and has vowed to keep both Romulus and Remus uninvolved with inter-galaxy affairs from now on."_

_Withdrawn._

Picard looked back at Beverly.  She was still so lovely, even after all these years…but, no: he told himself, for the thousandth time – there was no allowance for such feelings there…not in this lifetime, at any rate…

She leaned forward, placing a hand on his.  He gazed up, searchingly, into her eyes.

"I think, Jean-Luc," she said, gently, "That sometimes we just have to let go.  Life isn't something that we always have to question; it isn't something that we always have to understand…"

Sometimes, it is best to let destiny take control of us, and leave everything else behind… 

**A/N:**  For some odd reason, the formatting may be messed up here; I'm very sorry…FFN is being mean to me today, it appears…but I will soon see to it that the errors are tended to.  In the meantime, I crave your understanding and patience. 


	2. The Praetor and the Sorceress

– If We Shadows Have Offended –

A/N: Same disclaimer and comments from the last chapter.  Enjoy…

The Royal Palace on Romulus… 

The Romulan royal palace – in which the Senate rotunda was to be found – was resplendent and imposingly magnificent in the light of the dying sun.  Its walls and many tower, domed caps of roofs, and pillars gleamed in the ruby-red twilight; and one solitary figure stood on a balcony, looking out over the palace grounds, and the city beyond it.

Each world had a kind of magic in it; she knew this all too well, and reveled in the knowledge.  Every planet had a kind of inner enchantment held within its sphere, no matter how subliminal.

Romulus – and Remus – was no different.

Closing her eyes of vibrant sapphire: eyes that were flecked with the entrancing, radiation-like glow of green, she surrendered to the deep, exotic aura of nightfall…

A gentle, warm wind out of the east swept up to her then, catching around the dazzlingly beautiful and mysterious sorceress's black-silk clad figure and playing with the loose blue-black strands of her long, full tresses of jet.  Isis, consort and lover of the Praetor Shinzon, smiled: her lips softly curving as she became aware of a familiar, powerful presence behind her.

Her mind formed a picture of him before she had even begun to turn around.  He was standing there, only a scant three feet behind her, garbed in his customary uniform of magnificent gleaming black, the evening sun's light catching the jewel-tones in its depths.  The breeze that had whirled around her now went on to spiral about him, causing the long, full-cut tail of his coat to snap and undulate elegantly about his slender, erect figure.

He was so confident: so proud and utterly unafraid, so urbane and completely captivating – a man worthy of holding sway over the fate of not one, but two planets.  A man truly capable of ruling – over both Romulans and Remans…and her heart.  A man, young and handsome, who held the depths of great, all-consuming passion in his soul…

Isis turned, ever so slightly, as his well-muscled, long arms came around her from behind then, locking about her slim waist and drawing her to him.  Shinzon's full, velvet lips brushed against her ear, his breath stirring her hair as he murmured lowly to her, "My beloved…"

Both Shinzon and Isis knew full well what would have been if Fate – extraordinary, unbelievable Fate – had not mercifully intervened in their lives.

He would have lived a short, bitter life, filled with cynicism, rage, and the shattered, brittle shards of broken dreams: burnt out in a moment of regret and uncertainty, to become embers, space dust, in the endless void.  She would have forever remained a runaway slave, an outcast for life because of her strange, potent powers.

But now…now their lives had begun – they had found one another.  He was healed, and she had discovered her place: it had taken a good deal of effort on both of their parts, complete with time travel and stopping a war that had been about to begin.  But it was worth it…oh, it was so worth it all…

"It was all worth it, my love…" she whispered to him, closing her eyes and leaning it back, against his gently heaving and residing chest, twining her arms about his graceful neck as he bent his head down to kiss her, gently, again and again.  "Everything…it could not have ended any better…"

"Oh, but it is not over yet, my ravishing black rose; far from it, in fact…" her lover commented, as he continued to caress her, longingly.

Isis let her exotic features take on a disapproving expression, and she twisted in his arms, turning so that she could face him.

Shinzon looked down on her with a vastly amused expression in his blue-green eyes.  Isis ran a slow and daring hand up his high collar, to sweep her fingertips lightly and deftly over the back of his smoothly shaven skull. 

"The Praetor is certain that he should so contradict a lady?" she mockingly questioning him, one eyebrow lifting.

The full lips of the Praetor quirked, in tandem with the dark eyebrows.  Drawing nearer to her, as he gathered her hands into his, he replied, "Ah, but you are not just a lady, my beloved, my goddess…you are a lady and a sorceress."

Isis was considering making a return-fire retort of how he would do well to remember it, when Shinzon appeared to have already read her mind, and known her thoughts.  For, with his characteristic wicked smirk, he simply – wordlessly and inexorably – pulled her into his arms, bringing her up against him.  Then, the two figures on the balcony came together for the inevitable kiss, and the final words that the warm breeze carried away into the approaching night were…

"And I cannot think of anyone I would rather share the rest of my life with; embrace me, my beloved…"

_If we shadows have offended,_

_Think but this, and all is mended,_

_That you have but slumber'd here_

_While these visions did appear._

_And this weak and idle theme,_

_No more yielding than **a dream**…_

One last note – the follow-up Shinzon and Isis fic, working title _Swing Time_, is in the works…look for it, if you wish, in the next month or so…


End file.
